Handling Subscription Partial Upgrade

There are cases for NCE subscriptions when a customer wants to partially upgrade their subscriptions. For example, a customer has a subscription of Office 365 Enterprise E1 with 17 licensed seats and wants to upgrade five seats to Office 365 Enterprise E3.

A provider can perform such a partial upgrade through CloudBlue Commerce using the Special Upgrade Tool microservice.

Technically, this operation results in two subscriptions:

• The existing one with the reduced number of seats

• A new subscription co-termed with the original one or another existing subscription being upsized

How to Perform a Partial Upgrade of a Subscription

To perform a partial upgrade of a subscription, follow these steps:

1. In the Classic Operations Panel, go to Services and select Special Upgrade Tool.

2. Depending on which subscription you want to upgrade and transfer seats to, choose one of the following tabs:

   • Partial upgrade to a new subscription

     • In the Subscription ID field, enter the ID of the subscription that a customer wants to upgrade.

     • In the Service plan ID to be upgraded on field, enter the ID of a service plan to be upgraded on. For delegated plans, enter the ID of the plan that is on the same reseller level as the selected subscription.

     • In the Amount field, enter the number of seats to be upgraded and moved.

     Important: Processing of such an upgrade can take up to 24 hours. Any modification to the newly created subscription will be rejected.

   • Partial Upgrade to an existing subscription

     • In the Subscription ID field, enter the ID of the subscription that a customer wants to upgrade.

     • In the Destination subscription ID field, enter the ID of the subscription that a customer wants to upgrade and transfer their seats to.

     • In the Amount field, enter the number of seats to be upgraded and moved.

3. Click Start Partial Upgrade.

Сlick Start Partial Upgrade and refresh the page to check that the operation has started and at least one subscription order has the status In Progress. Alternatively, you can check the order status in Billing on the Orders tab of the respective subscription.

Note that the partial upgrade can take up to several hours to complete. You can check the operation status by finding the subscription or plan ID in the Unfinished Partial Upgrade Operations or Finished Partial Upgrade Operations lists.

Orders may be processed for several hours and transition to the Completed status at different times.

An order will have the Problem status if there is an issue with downsizing the source subscription or migrating to a destination subscription. Such orders will need to be fixed manually.

Note: Use the operation ID for troubleshooting purposes.

The status None means there is a missing order and it needs to be placed manually.

If both orders fail, cancel the operation using the Cancel button in the Unfinished Partial Upgrade Operations list and start the operation again.

How to Schedule Changing of a Subscription's Billing Period

Using the Special Upgrade Tool, changing of a subscription's billing period can be scheduled for the next billing date. 

This is only possible if scheduling changes is enabled for the subscription's service plan.

To schedule billing period change for a subscription, complete the following steps:

1. In the Classic Operations Panel, go to Services and select Special Upgrade Tool.

2. Switch to the Schedule billing period change tab.

3. Complete the necessary fields:

   • Subscription ID. Enter ID of the subscription to change its billing period.

   • ID of the service plan with the required billing period. Specify the ID of the service plan that has a desired subscription period.

   • Subscription period. Select the subscription period to change to.

   • Recurring price for Reseller. If needed, you can adjust the recurring price of the subscription to apply after the period is changed.

4. Click Schedule subscription billing period change.

As a result, a change order will be scheduled for this subscription and in the next billing date its subscription period will be updated.

Note: It is not possible to schedule billing period change if it's the last billing period of the subscription. In such a case, you can schedule the change for subscription renewal instead.